Why Millennials Can’t Stop Crying About ‘Arthur’ Ending

THE DAILY BEAST’S OBSESSED

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

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PBS

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.

This week:

Millennials (As in…Me) Can’t Stop Crying About Kids’ Shows

Of the things that make me cry on a daily basis these days—check the news for five minutes, and take your pick—I didn’t expect one would be an aardvark.

An animated aardvark, to be specific. The animated aardvark.

And you know what? He deserves every ounce of that emotion. The PBS series Arthur aired its final episode this week, after 25 years. It was a bittersweet triumph: a beautiful farewell to an influential and progressive TV series, but a jarring reminder of how quickly time passes and times change—and how complicated that change can be.

We’ve been less humans these last few years than walking, talking, sentient geysers of exploding emotion. With trauma, with fear, with sadness, anger, and dread—the potent cocktail of “being alive in 2022”—comes something equally powerful: nostalgia. Perhaps that’s why there’s been this unexpectedly vocal and deeply felt sentiment when it comes to developments in children’s programming.

What would have been blips of a news cycle gone unnoticed have boomed into seismic cultural events, occasion for reminiscing about how our hearts and minds were shaped by cartoons and kids’ shows that seemed so innocuous at the time, but now we can see as foundational for the people we have become. While the world is charging at us with a relentless battalion of reasons to ask things like, “Is this really who we are?,” it’s a profound exercise to remember back to a more innocent version of oneself—and even more so to recognize the bravery and care with which these series validated and encouraged that fragile person.

When the original Steve from Blue’s Clues returned to mark an anniversary last year, directly addressing the hardships that came with the growing up we’ve done since we last saw him on TV, there was a collective ugly cry among millennials on social media (and, let’s be honest, IRL, too.) There’s a similar thing happening with Arthur now that it’s ending. You don’t know what something, or someone, means to you until it’s time to say goodbye.

The finale flashed forward 20 years or so to catch us up on what Arthur and his gang were up to as adults—adults who (shudder) are about the same age as we are now.

It was comforting to know they’re all OK. That they seemed to have achieved dreams, but on a realistic, moderate scale. It was joyous to see that they’ve grown comfortable enough to truly be themselves. (Draw your own conclusions about Francine’s identity based on how her adult version was stylized.)

Like all news stories these days, you can’t separate the headline from the emotion and the context. Arthur, like so many groundbreaking children’s programs, is a series that never shied away from real issues and the progressive realities of the world. (Admittedly, this isn’t the only time we’ve recently cried over Arthur. The news of Mr. Ratburn’s same-sex wedding, and the show’s fortitude in airing it in spite of conservative family groups’ protests, did get us misty.)

As I write this, Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed. News quickly spread this week of the introduction of a measure in Texas that would require parents of trans children to be reported for child abuse.

I’m not quite sure I would even be able to summon the words that would articulate how painful this is, how hateful it is, and how dangerous this could be for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. Every time I try, it’s not right—not severe enough, not specific enough, not as irrefutable as it needs to be. I start to get too emotional and lose the will to try again. The baffled, distraught “Is this really who we are?” once again applies.

But that’s why, I think, we get so overwhelmed thinking about these kids’ shows from our past. We were lucky enough to be guided by entertainment that grew with us, our emotional needs, and a changing culture that needed their influence to help move it forward. I can only hope there’s going to be more Arthurs for these children who, especially now, are going to need it.

Children’s programming has historically been amongst the most provocative and, facing backlash, courageous there is in entertainment. (My good friend just pointed me toward a groundswell of backlash against Thomas the Tank Engine because the locomotives are, evidently, “fEeLiNg” too much…)

The smallest amount of comfort is to be taken in the certainty that, at the very least, similar shows with similar missions will continue. Your move, Paw Patrol.

When We’re All Past Our Last F*ckable Days…

Well, I see we’re doing this shit again.

What should have been an unmemorable casting notice this week ended up being the lighting rod for a social media thunderstorm of outrage, exhaustion, and, frankly, disgust.

Tom Holland is going to star in a new Apple TV+ series called The Crowded Room. Fantastic. I can’t think of a more likable major star right now than Holland. Emmy Rossum is joining him in a major role. Well, yippee. There are few actresses more talented and deserving of major showcases than the perennially undervalued Shameless star, who should have at least one Emmy Award and multiple nominations under her belt.

Then, the kicker: Rossum is playing Holland’s mother, despite being just 10 years older.

You would have thought that by now we would have dismantled, discontinued, and buried in the center of the earth this ridiculous casting pattern: Male actors are virile leading men until they croak on set; women are ingenues until their thirties, after which they reach, as Amy Schumer brilliantly dubbed it, their “last fuckable day” and become dowdy mothers—often to actors who are their age-appropriate peers. (My favorite example: Sally Field played Tom Hanks’ love interest in the film Punchline. Six years later, she was his mother in Forrest Gump.)

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Comedy Central

Listen, I haven’t seen the scripts for this show. Maybe there are flashbacks in which it makes sense to have a younger actress play the mother to a younger version of Holland’s character. Sure. Or maybe I’m being generous and this is just absolutely ridiculous.

In any case, I’m still thrilled about my planned Hollywood star vehicle: Portraying Harry Styles’ great-grandfather in a searing family drama about a great-grandfather making out with Harry Styles.

I’m Uninterested in Everything But the Adele Uninterested Meme

I don’t often feel bad for celebrities. An invasion of privacy must be terrible in ways that I can’t even imagine. The extent to which you’re unable to do normal things must be destabilizing. But you’re also so fucking rich, so… [shrug emoji].

In any case, I both had deep empathy for Adele and also laughed my ass off as footage of her trying to ignore an obtrusive camera in her face at the NBA All-Star Game became a meme. Captions ran the gamut of “me ignoring my responsibilities” and “me pretending not to see my enemy across the room.”

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TNT

For me, it might as well be “me seeing the warning signs that this newsletter is going to go egregiously over length,” and then typing another 500 words anyway. Whoops.

And speaking of newsletters, you’re a damn fool if you don’t sign up for Source Material, a new newsletter spearheaded by my The Daily Beast friend and colleague Lachlan Cartwright and our tenacious media desk. It’s a juicy, mischievous needling into the drama, intrigue, and utter bullshit puppeteered by the biggest power players in politics, media, and our own little vacation home of tone-deaf bad actors: entertainment. Subscribe here! (Do it!)

Horny for Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al

There was a very artsy preview of Daniel Radcliffe in costume as “Weird Al” Yankovic, the most delightfully “huh?” casting decision in as long as I can remember. Anyway, here he is in the Hawaiian shirt. I am aroused and I am confused. I’ll need a moment with this.

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Roku TV

What to watch this week:

Better Things: This has been a magical jewel of a show, spinning ordinary life into Big Feelings. It’s the final season! (Mon. on FX)

Top Chef: Roughly 474 seasons in, this is still the best reality TV competition there is. If you don’t agree you can pack your damn knives and go. (Thurs. on Bravo)

Vikings: Valhalla: Hell yeah! (Fri. on Netflix)

What to skip:

Chappelle’s Home Team: [Sigh] Remember when he was “canceled?” Lololol (Mon. on Netflix)

Killing Eve: [Sigh] Remember when this was, like, the best? (Sun. on BBC America)

The Problem With Jon Stewart: [Sigh] Remember when this was gonna save us all? (Thurs. on Apple TV+)